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POLITICO 44

Journalist Jack Nelson, who died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at age 80, earned his fame as one of Washington’s best-connected and best-known reporters.

He also outlived the position that made him so influential.

Nelson spent 20 years — from 1975 to 1995— as a dominant player in the nation’s capital as the bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times.

But the years since have radically devalued the title of Washington bureau chief — and not only at the Times. There are still bureau chiefs, though far fewer in number, as many regional newspapers either shut down their offices here or sharply downsize their presence.

But veteran reporters Wednesday noted that there are no longer bureau chiefs of the sort represented by Nelson and a generation of colleagues who moved through Washington with an outsized presence.

Bureau chiefs for the newspapers and weekly magazines were ambassadors for their publications in Washington. They interviewed presidents and lunched with congressmen and White House aides. They were familiar names to anyone who followed Washington.

In those days, bureau chiefs often had dozens of reporters under their direct command, a powerful force to shape what millions of Americans learned about the capital and national politics.

“It was somebody who knew everybody and everything that moved,” recalled Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman, who came to the capital in 1978 for the Louisville Courier-Journal. “And who, with the backing of a big bureau, could really turn on a big story when necessary; somebody who was not only a good reporter and could get around town, but had some reporting horsepower — they could get a dozen people dialing phones in the era before Google.”

These days, the Washington bureau chiefs who still exist are often forlorn figures — little known beyond their own publications, busy trying (usually unsucessfuly) to hold the home office at bay from further budget cuts.

Nelson, a son of the South, earned his journalistic stripes covering Klan rallies, redneck sheriffs and civil rights marches in the Jim Crow-era ’60s. Fellow Southern correspondent and Washington Post veteran Haynes Johnson recalls Nelson being singled out to the crowd by Alabama Gov. George Wallace at a time when such recognition could cause far more peril than the jeers of a crowd.

But it was his arrival in Washington, and his promotion in 1975 to bureau chief, that put him on a larger stage. A year later, Jimmy Carter became president, giving fellow Southerner Nelson a natural canvas for his reporting and writing skills.

It wasn’t long before Nelson had acquired all the prestige that Washington journalism could bestow: Sperling breakfast regular, “Washington Week” fixture, Gridiron president, Neiman fellow and all-around Washington wise man.

Nelson’s time in the capital represents the high-water mark of print journalism — the post-Watergate era that saw such papers as the Los Angeles Times become mentioned in the same breath with the other Times and their stars take a seat of prominence among Washington’s elite.

“That was the era when newspapers were still dominant in the information world, before the Internet, before the blogs, before cable,” said Walter Mears, longtime political reporter for The Associated Press and the wire service’s Washington bureau chief in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

When Nelson became bureau chief in 1975, the Los Angeles Times had 15 reporters and three editors, according to the paper. By 1996, when Nelson turned the job over to White House correspondent Doyle McManus, it had 36 reporters, seven editors and a reputation for excellent and probing political reporting.

Marty Nolan, a longtime Boston Globe bureau chief, traces the growth back to Watergate, still perhaps the iconic print story in American history.

“Woodward and Bernstein broke the monopoly of the New York Times,” Nolan said, recalling the old saw around town said to have been repeated by secretaries to high-ranking officials: “Sir, there are some reporters here to see you — and a gentleman from The New York Times.”

That is a terrible obit on the life and career of Jack Nelson, the distinguished journalist and longtime Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. Clearly your correspondent knew little about the significance of Mr. Nelson's role in the nation's capital and sadly he chose not to take the time to learn of Jack Nelson's considerable contribution to journalistic excellence.

Instead of a responsible obituary celebrating the life of Mr. Nelson, Politico offered its readers a critique on the state of print journalism and the disappearance of Washington bureau chiefs and their staff of supporting correspondents. It's an old journalistic trick: if you don't know enough about the subject of your piece, then write about something else and hope the reader fails to notice.

But we do notice. You missed a chance in your sorry obituary about Mr. Nelson's life and career to say something important about the role distinguished journalism plays in the life of this nation. I write as a friend and colleague who served under Jack Nelson in the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau.